Beer Bread

Do you like beer? Do you like bread? Do I have a recipe for you. This is the easiest, and some of the best bread I've made yet.. and it's infinitely customizable.

Ingredients:

• 3 cups all purpose unbleached flour
• 3 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 (12 ounce) can beer
• 1/4 cup melted butter

Directions:

1. Preheat Oven to 375

2. Mix dry ingredients with beer in seperate bowl.

3. Pour mixture into a greased (or non-stick sprayed) loaf pan. (don't skip this or you'll never get your bread out)

4. Even mixture out in pan and pour melted butter over top of dough.

5. Bake for 50min to 1hr, or until the top and sides become brown and crusty. Let cool for 10 minutes before serving.

That's it! No kneading, no proofing, not even any yeast - the yeast in the beer is used as the levener, the baking powder gives it an extra kick.

Variations:

Butter: I used 2 tablespoons instead of 1/4 of a cup, and it was still delicous. I wouldn't recommend completely cutting it out, but you definately don't need to use the full amount.

Beer: Different beers will give the bread different flavors, I recommend using something with a strong flavor to give the bread a nice tangy flavor. I've tried Summit EPA, and Pauliner Amber - both were excellent, but the amber came through more in the finished bread.

Whole Wheat Beer Bread: 2 Cups Whole wheat flour, 1 cup All Purpose.Cut down the sugar if you don't want it quite so sweet.

Beer Cheese bread: Add 1 to 1.5 cups of shredded cheese to dough mix.

Now I pose you a question.

Which food goes well with beer?

The correct answer is Nachos.

So I present to you my jalapeno-cheese-beer bread photo essay. Delicious.